One week pa.s.sed since Sam sent the first three curses through the first three targets into the city and the fiend tribe.
In this week, they sent another twenty people with the curse attached to them while they changed their camp nine times.
The Fiend tribe officially declared a lockdown over the city.
The twenty-three targets caused a pandemic inside the city, but the most affected are obviously the Fiend tribe members.
The normal local people are not really affected, except for a few casualties as they were not allowed to come into contact with the targets that were sent back in.
And the contact has to be made when the target is dying, so the normal commoners don"t have any way to contact them.
But the deaths within the fiend tribe are increasing day by day and the main reason for that is the chain reaction that started from the elder"s son.
After he died and the curse was transmitted to both the healer and the maid, the Elder who was furious started taking his anger out of the mage while the healer went to do some research on the body to find the cause of the death.
While going through all the abuse, the life of the maid went away earlier than expected and in the process, the Elder caught the curse.
Meanwhile, the healer who got the curse managed to spot it earlier than the others as soon as the symptoms started showing. He started taking medicine and used his light elemental energy to try to diffuse the curse.
But to his dismay, it is not working. It is barely slowing the curse down. He managed to hold out for a whole day before he died, but while he was dying, three healers are holding his body making three of them catch it.
The effect of the curse is slower on them as the energy was distributed. But it is not much slower than the first curse Sam placed. After all, going through so many people strengthened itself a lot.
Meanwhile, the curse that went through the rabbit to the maid, followed her as she was demoted to the barracks arranged for the maids to die that night, and many maids who tried to help her caught it.
Since their cultivation is lower, by the next morning, the maids that got the curse were showing the symptoms and some more people came into contact with it.
The city guards also had the same trouble. But when they felt like this was contagious they contained it with only over a dozen deaths, but that didn"t stop them from getting infected, it only stopped it from the curse going outside of their camp.
After all, they couldn"t understand that the curse is only contagious after the person is dead, not before. But they are refraining from touching the people when they were alive while they are touching the bodies after they are dead.
This caused a rather rapid spread.
When Sam got the gist of the news from the shadow mice, he stopped the whole cursing and just sat back and relaxed.
"I did my part. The city will be in utter chaos and there would be many people that are going to die, even if they didn"t, they would be weakened and that includes the Chief of the tribe, granted that he comes into contact with something dead due to the curse which is most likely to happen.
So, now deal with them and bring back the heirloom, so that we can finally put an end to this stupid pact."
"Why? You don"t like this. I liked it actually. It is fun." Akhil said from the side.
"Of course, it would be fun for me too, if you wussies are not so d.a.m.n weak. I have to hold back my strength and my tools so much that I am feeling exhausted."
All of them just ignored his comments and left to do their jobs. Before they left Sam warned.
"Don"t touch the dead bodies of the cursed and if you did, come to me immediately and we might have a chance, otherwise you would be dead and unlike the previous players who died, you wouldn"t even get a proper burial."
"Don"t Jinx it you a.s.shole. Your masty curse might really get me." Akhil yelled back while the rest of them just chuckled and went away.
For the next two weeks, the Fiend tribe felt the terror bigger than the one they faced at the war. Even in that war, they didn"t feel like they are going to be uprooted, but they felt it now.
Every now and then, the fiend tribe people came out to collect and buy herbs from other places so that they could aid the research of this contagious curse, but none of the people that came out ever managed to return. They died.
When people started going to investigate, but there are no traces. They disappeared into thin air. At least, that is what they thought when they saw no trace.
People are dying inside out and by the end of the two weeks the son of the tribe chief also got the curse because he cried while hugging his brother who died the day before.
And that night, the tribe chief caught the curse from his son.
But with his cultivation level, he managed to observe it immediately. But he could at most suppress it as it grew too big after pa.s.sing through so many high-level cultivators. He couldn"t just expel it forcefully.
That would make him extremely vulnerable.
At least for now, he could keep suppressing it and at least maintain his position. Otherwise, the external members wouldn"t just remain calm. They would just burn the whole tribe up if they saw a small crack in his behavior.
But his worries came true faster than he originally thought.
The other organizations slowly started dealing with the other areas under the control of the Fiend tribe on various planets.
But the tribe doesn"t have enough manpower to retaliate.
They could only sit and wait as their elites died one after another. Not in some mighty war, rather on a sickbed.
While the situation is like this, the players slowly started becoming more and more daring.
After the two weeks of this farce, Dayus suddenly selected the Fiend tribe in his wrist screen.
Sam frowned at this, but he didn"t give out any obvious objections. He doesn"t care if he wanted the glory all to himself, but that is impossible to achieve anyway.
All the other players also selected the Fiend tribe in the list. Since multiple selections is available now, there is no point in Dayus" action.
It is just that Noah, Sam, and k.u.mar couldn"t keep their ident.i.ties hidden anymore.
They would be exposed and by now, there is no point in hiding them too.
For the next week, the players came on to the Fiend tribe crazily.
They attacked openly and started chipping it away bit by bit.
When the tribe chief learned about the situation from the G.o.ds, he understood that everything will be gone as soon as he gave up the heirloom.
He looked at the dying members one by one and immediately made a decision.
He met with the players and decided to give up the heirloom in exchange for the cure for this situation.
Sam didn"t reject it at all and he gave the cure to them. It is just a very special liquid. A small amount of light elemental energy liquid was mixed with various herbs that have effects on the curses as they were made into potions.
Everything went smoothly.
They got the heirloom.
Now, the situation changed. Two heirlooms are in their hands and now the problem is how do they split the resources. In fact, it is not even the question of how they should split, it is whether they would split it or not.
They all gathered in the camp as they ate.
"So, how do we go about this?"
Sam is the first one to break the question.
Everyone is silent, n.o.body wants to say anything. They knew this trouble would come sooner or later. But n.o.body wants to break that ice.
"Trust me guys. If you really don"t want to talk, I would just take the whistle and get away from here. There is no reason for me to worry about giving you guys a chance."
"We need to have a fair fight regarding this, but before that, I want you to hand over the beast whistle to us."
Dayus suddenly spoke up. Sam raised an eyebrow as he looked at him.
"Us? Who is this "us" you are talking about?"
"The rest of the players and I don"t trust you or Arkiv. Both of you are in alliance. Your cultivation level is higher than that of us and you even have a team lurking somewhere nearby.
We cannot deal with you with our current might and we don"t want to take the risk. Only if you handover the heirloom now, would we have the trust that you would fight fairly."